


xxi

by feelingfrenzy



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Established Relationship, M/M, not gonna bother y'all with lore pretend this is a past lives soulmates au or smth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:02:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24074887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feelingfrenzy/pseuds/feelingfrenzy
Summary: “We’re still bound by fate,” Minhyuk taps the table slightly. “The greatest duo of this generation. Like Romeo and Juliet or Jesus and Christ.”the one with pablo neruda sonnets
Relationships: Chae Hyungwon/Lee Minhyuk
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	xxi

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is 2 years old and i still feel like i never put more emotion in any other piece of writing like this one  
> part of series but whatever i'm just bored in quarantine and translated this to practice and because i have a writer's block

_If only love would spread its savor through me!  
—not to go one moment more without spring!_

Minhyuk gets these stupid fixations all the time and won’t let it go until he reaches his goal. Usually it’s something harmless, like ‘I need to climb this tree’, ‘let’s walk on that bridge’ or ‘I need to take a pic like this one meme’, so it’s fine.

But today it’s something way more serious.

“No, look,” he sits across to him and puts their tea cups on the table with a loud thump. “You keep complaining about your landlord and that this apartment is small. I have an entire list of your complaints. This is why I tell you: move in with me.”

“And I’m telling you for the third time,” Hyungwon sighs patiently and stirs the sugar in the tea. “We will break up and you will regret it.”

Minhyuk clicks his tongue and snorts. “You are already planning to break up?”

“I might if you won’t shut up. You have thirty minutes.” He ignores an offended look in his direction, takes a sip and continues. “You have an attention span of ten minutes, so you might break up with me tomorrow yourself.”

“No, Hyungwon… I am sure this is for life,” he shakes his head and props his chin on his hand. “I know we loved each other in our past lives. I was born yearning for your long lithe legs.”

“I have absolutely normal legs,” Hyungwon even sticks it out and checks it—he never heard that fancy word so he mostly just pretends he searches for a proof of that statement being wrong. “Was you waiting for a great moment to confess then?”

Minhyuk nods enthusiastically. “As soon as I realized whose legs I was missing.”

“Sounds beautiful, but I think you’re my archnemesis from the past life.”

“We’re still bound by fate,” Minhyuk taps the table slightly. “The greatest duo of this generation. Like Romeo and Juliet or Jesus and Christ.”

Hyungwon laughs out loud. “They all died, I don’t like this comparison.”

Minhyuk stares at him, blinks and suddenly gasps, clutching his chest. “Holy shit. I’m so glad you have a brain so you keep me from turning into a lovesick idiot. I love you so much.”

Hyungwon later watches Minhyuk struggling with the TV trying to make Netflix work and thinks—he’s already feeling like at home here, so maybe he should try it. It’s not like he wasn’t constantly staying over for a night, so why not move completely? He already has his toothbrush here and it feels so right to be on Minhyuk’s side. He falls asleep in the middle of a movie accidentally with these thoughts.

Maybe they really knew each other in past life.

_What I sold into sorrow was only my hands,  
dearest: now leave me with your kisses._

Next morning Minhyuk comes a bit late for breakfast—Hyungwon already finishes making coffee for them both and starts drinking, impatient. He walks in with hair is in a huge mess, one eye still closed, in a crinkled anime t-shirt—such domestic sight makes Hyungwon pause for a second, that he nearly jumps up when Minhyuk sloppily tosses him a notebook.

“What is it?”

“It’s a list,” Minhyuk yawns without hiding his mouth with a hand and stirs his coffee.

Hyungwon opens the first page—there is a list, he didn’t lie. 25 points, but he only looks briefly because he knows what it is. _‘No pets allowed (I love turtles)’, ‘Smoking only at the balcony or I’ll get kicked out’, ‘Changkyun keeps asking for cigarettes (do I look like a cigarettes shop?!)’, ‘Problems with hot water’, ‘Thin walls’, ‘Security keeps snitching if people come over’, ‘Fridge is broken’_ —

Hyungwon looks over the notebook at Minhyuk, and he shrugs.

“I told you I keep a list.”

“Dumbass,” he breathes out with a laugh. Minhyuk and his stupid lists that he makes to prove his points and convince people into stupid shit.

He smiles widely at this. “Do you know what Changkyun likes to say?”

“Please, anything but Im Changkyun’s Most Inspirational Quotes,” Hyungwon winces and sips his coffee. “I start to think your brain also turns into pure cotton candy.”

Minhyuk sighs. “I guess it’s inevitable,” he looks down at his reflection in his own cup, “After falling in love, sooner or later you get cotton candy for brains.”

Hyungwon would like to disagree, he never felt his brain replaced with any dessert, but then Minhyuk gives him a bright warm smile and he feels it—just not in the brain. Sweet, sticky feeling in his chest, cotton candy warmed up back to syrup dripping down his ribs, making it hard to breathe.

_Shut out the month’s light with your fragrance,  
close all the doors with your hair._

__

_**min**  
_ _hyungwon._

__

_**min**  
_ _soooooo_

__

_**min**  
_ _??????_

__

_**min**  
_ _did u think of it_

__

_**min**  
_ _stop ignoring me_

__

_**min**  
_ _jshsjxvkxbxkxhskvx_

__

_**min**  
_ _!!!!!!!!!_

__

_**You**  
_ _I think I lost my phone. Wait a bit, I’ll find it and reply._

__

_**min**  
_ _oh ok_

__

_**min**  
_ _did u find it_

__

_**You**  
_ _No_

__

_**min**  
_ _fawk.. and what r u gonna do now :(_

__

_**min**  
_ _wait_

__

_**You**  
_ _You are so stupid God Bless. I feel bad._

__

_**min**  
_ _fuck youuuu_

“Careful, your face is gonna crack,” and then Yeoreum throws a pack of ice cream to him—it lands on his thigh and burns through the pants, so Hyungwon lets out a gasp. She sits next to him and bites into her own ice cream. “Moral compensation. It’s Changkyun’s money, so think of it as him compensating for being a hazardous het.”

“I think they’re trolling me,” Hyungwon snorts and tries to open the pack—it doesn’t give up easily. “Luda was asking me to ride the ferris wheel with them.”

“You should’ve brought Minhyuk with you and annoy them too.” Yeoreum watches him struggle and giggles. “Oh god, let me help,” and she reaches out a hand.

Hyungwon gives it to her and she opens it in an easy swift movement—truly a professional, she must’ve gotten used to these packs, she works in this amusement park. “We are not an annoying couple, though,” he mumbles mostly to himself as he gets his ice cream back.

“That’s right,” she nods and takes a bite of her ice cream. “I love third wheeling with you.”

He believes her—she’s a frequent third wheeler, they often meet her on their way from university when they pass by her high school. She knows what she’s talking about, if she didn’t start to hate them after so many walks.

***

Maybe this is not fair of him.

He wants to believe Minhyuk never lied to him, but Hyungwon can’t say the same about himself. On the other hand, it seems to be such a minor thing—who haven’t ever seen a pointless nightmare that gave you a weird phobia?—so maybe he shouldn’t think it matters.

(Minhyuk reaches out a hand and begs not to leave him— _”we can buy a house in Phuket and adopt a turtle, you love turtles, right?”_ ;  
Minhyuk throws a coin endlessly, muttering “heads or tails”, not looking at him;  
Minhyuk’s hands smell like gasoline, he has burn scars and a guilty look in his eyes but he never says what happened;  
iridescent veil of glitch and white noise, and a thought of _“how could that happen?”_ )

Hyunwoo says something really funny and not relevant, like “that’s the point of love, you worry about someone more than about yourself”—when Hyungwon questions him if he ever dated anyone to say so, he asks for a moment and wipes fake tears on his cheeks. Changkyun agrees on that, adding something about the psychology of nightmares. Hyungwon just loves Minhyuk so much that he worries he will leave him, but it shows up in symbols. That’s the only consolement available, that it’s not real and nothing will happen— _again?_ —and that he still can grip Minhyuk’s hand so hard that he yelps and distracts him from these thoughts.

Minhyuk once grips back, and maybe not intentionally, but it hurts—Hyungwon screams out loud.

“What?” He snorts innocently.

“You… broke all of my 27 palm bones,” Hyungwon whines to add drama to the situation and fake sniffles.

Minhyuk starts laughing and falls on his shoulder. “Why the fuck there are so many of them?”

“Totally not for you to break them all in one go,” Hyungwon pushes him off with the ‘injured’ hand and smacks his head lightly.

Not all of these dreams are bad—sometimes they just meet again and again, but in different circumstances. He and Changkyun meet him in a city with a weird name, far away from their home, and Hyungwon predicts his death; they introduce themselves for the first time in a jail, behind the metal bars, and plan an escape; neon blue lights and skyscrapers, dusty air and weird technology. They don’t fall in love all the time—sometimes they stay as friends, but most of the time they end up together again, as if Minhyuk was right about them being past-life lovers.

You can make something like _Cloud Atlas_ with all these dreams, he figures. But cooler—it didn’t have a mage who can travel through dreams or criminals working for police, or dystopian society where people live according to their blood type. He thinks of writing all of these dreams down, but always hesitates—it scares him how many details he actually remembers, it sometimes feels as if he hadn’t dreamed of it but still knows that somehow. He had started writing down one of his dreams, but suddenly stopped halfway and closed the Word document without saving, feeling too scared to continue.

The dream was about Minhyuk being some kind of fallen evil angel with a knife that can hurt gods, and that dream had Luda for some reason here, fighting him back with a harpoon, surrounded by lights similar to deep water fishes—she pierces through him, but he moves further, bleeding in white noise, and one of his frantic arm swings ends up cutting her chest and shoulder. Few days after Luda smacks Minhyuk with a notebook all over his face in the middle of a university hallway for saying something silly about heterosexuality, as always, and Hyungwon feels weirdly uncomfortable and out of place.

If he actually was wrong and ESP exists and he has it, he has the weirdest way of predicting the future.

Minhyuk has a lot of books at home, mostly poems—he really loves it and buys the whole collection even if he only likes one line out of the whole collection. Hyungwon never liked poetry, he is more of a numbers person, but he loves listening to Minhyuk reading, and sometimes skimmers through the books out of boredom.

And one day his eyes get hooked up on a Sonnet XXI by Pablo Neruda—one stanza gets stuck in his brain, he remembers it after reading it once, and it’s constantly on his mind for a solid week at least.

_Only do not forget, if I wake up crying  
it’s only because in my dream I’m a lost child_

__

__

_hunting through the leaves of night for your hands,_

He even learns the entire sonnet for absolutely no reason but to get rid of this weird dull ache in his chest, akin to the phantom pain in the lost limb. A ghost of the pain from another life—another Hyungwon felt the same.

This phantom pain makes him hug Minhyuk too tight one night when they’re cuddling to sleep. Minhyuk gets woken up and lightly punches his shoulder.

“What was that?”

Hyungwon’s throat feels dry. “Nothing.” Minhyuk lies down on his shoulder again and he buries his face in his hair. “I just thought that I love you.”

Minhyuk giggles.

“I’m serious, I never tell you—”

“And I know it anyway,” he strokes his cheek and snuggles closer with his nose into his neck. “I know you struggle with expressing emotions, so I never pressure you. You said that too.”

Hyungwon wants to say something—like “what did I do to deserve you?” or “it’s not about that, I’m scared that someday it would be too late”—but instead he just sighs and hugs him closer.

“But I hope you will let me know if you change your mind,” Minhyuk mumbles and then goes back to sleep.

Maybe there’s really nothing serious about it. First, it’s just a paranoia induced nightmare, no real threat. Second—he doesn’t want to worry Minhyuk for no reason (really no reason). Hyungwon might not handle making him worry.

_for your caresses like wheat,  
the flashing rapture of shadow and energy._

Minhyuk dyes his hair back to black in October, but different shade from what it was like when they first met—this one shines in blue when it catches the light, that one was more of a dark chocolate. He looks like a big crow, and Hyungwon makes a mistake of saying this out loud, because Minhyuk immediately starts trying to make a realistic crow croak noise literally outside at a lively park. It lasts for three minutes that feel like ten hours of absolute embarrassment, then he loses his voice and plumps on the bench next to Hyungwon, who was sitting here head in hands the whole time, contemplating if anything ever was worth it.

Something between _why this idiot_ and _thank god for this idiot_.

“Do you think Professor Hani is just crazy with her alternate realities or it’s real?” Minhyuk suddenly asks him, his voice still raspy and low.

Hyungwon feels like running away. Like, hiding in the mountain cave or flying to the other side of Laurasia to start a farm in New Zealand, just so he doesn’t have to reply. He knows that if he says anything his voice would sound silly as hell and Minhyuk won’t let him live so he just shrugs.

 _What the hell us wrong with you,_ he curses at himself in his thoughts—why did he have to get anxious from this stupid question?

“I just got reminded about how stupid our meeting was,” Minhyuk says; he has to clear his throat close to the end of the sentence but he finishes it anyway. “Such a beautiful coincidence that you won’t be able to repeat it in another universe. And in the end we met only in this one. You get this?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Is the only thing that Hyungwon can think of.

Minhyuk clicks his tongue and shoots a finger gun at him. Here he goes, he already forgot about it.

But Hyungwon didn’t—he keeps thinking about it the whole way home while Minhyuk retells him a conversation with Juyeon about her and her girlfriend, and he wishes he could concentrate but his mind still wanders away to the alternate universes and the coincidences through them all. He makes a list of future conversation topics in his head to get distracted when Minhyuk moves to the story about drunk Sojung— _tell Minhyuk you accept his invitation; tell Minhyuk about that stupid dream; tell Minhyuk that the fucking cotton candy replaced all of his insides_ ;—but this only takes half a minute and brings him back to the thoughts about the only universe where they were able to meet like this.

What would’ve happened if this coincidence didn’t happen—a thought so terrifying that Hyungwon shuts it down immediately. It’s as scary as a thought of suddenly losing him to another coincidence. A thought about it makes his heart crack like a frozen poodle—before they both enter the apartment block he skips to the side of the road and stomps into one of these poodles, thin ice immediately breaking into a million of little pieces with a loud crisp.

Maybe Hyunwoo was right, and that’s the whole point—Minhyuk makes him worry about the things that he never even thought about before. Like worrying about his health, even on minor occasions. Like he was staring at the full pack of cigarettes and had no urge to smoke. That was so weird that he didn’t even try to kill Changkyun for stealing one from him.

Minhyuk meanwhile stands in front of his door, hands in his hips, staring into the apartment number sign with a frown. He takes a second and makes a third round of searching through all twenty of pockets he has on his pants and coat. Hyungwon randomly becomes hyper aware of warm metal in his hand, and realizes he holds the keys. He dropped it five minutes ago and Hyungwon picked it up. Yet for some reason he doesn't yet register that it’s the same keys that Minhyuk is searching for, and the thing that bothers him the most is his list of things that need to be said.

“Okay, I will move in with you,” Hyungwon blurts out.

Minhyuk frowns confusedly and turns to him, and his expression slowly warps into surprise at first, then gets replaced with a warm happy smile.

“I’m happy.”

They stand like that, looking at each other, and Hyungwon feels so fucking stupid, like it’s the first time in his life—it’s not, not even with Minhyuk; it’s just Minhyuk has some weird superpower to make him feel like it’s always the first time, to heat him up to the point where the cotton candy in his chest starts melting back to syrup.

And Hyungwon gets reminded about the keys again but this time realizes what these are, and thinks—this situation is so corny and cliché, like a cheap romance movie with no attempts to cover up cheesiness. He frantically thinks of whatever atmosphere ruining things he can say now so he can give him back the keys without it being embarrassing, but Minhyuk leans close and plants a short kiss on his lips. Then he puts his forehead against his, takes a short breath, probably to say something about him losing the keys, but Hyungwon leans away and starts talking first.

“But you will be helping me with all the paperwork for that,” he says with a sigh, grabs Minhyuk’s hand and returns him the keys.

_O my dearest, nothing but shadow there_  
_where you walk with me through your dream:_  
_you tell me when the light returns._

**Author's Note:**

> [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/woosangenjoyer)


End file.
